t of
the Terran rations, to enclose him in a groggy haze. He had been warned
against this reaction, but that was just another item he had pushed out
of his conscious mind. The last thing he remembered now was seeing
Karara move through a fuzzy cloud.

Voices argued somewhere beyond, the force of that argument carried more
by tone than any words Ross could understand. He was pulled sluggishly
out of a slumber too deep for any dream to trouble, and lifted heavy
eyelids to see Karara once again. There was a prick in his arm--or was
that part of the unreality about him?

"--four--five--six--" she was counting, and Ross found himself joining
in:

"--seven--eight--nine--ten!"

On reaching "ten" he was fully awake and knew that she had applied the
emergency procedure they had been drilled in using, giving him a pep
shot. When Ross sat up on the narrow bunk there was a light in the cabin
and no sign of day outside the porthole. Torgul, Vistur, the two other
cruiser captains, all there ... and Jazia.

Ross swung his feet to the deck. A pep-shot headache was already
beginning, but would wear off soon. There was, however, a concentration
of tension in the cabin, and something must have driven Karara to use
the drug.

"What is it?"

Karara fitted the medical kit into the compact carrying case.

"Tino-rau has returned. There _is_ a sub in the bay. It emits energy
waves on a shoreward beam."

"Then they are still there." Ross accepted the dolphin's report without
question. Neither of the scouts would make a mistake in those matters.
Energy waves beamed shoreward--power for some type of unit the Baldies
were using? Suppose the Rovers could find a way of cutting off the
power.

"The Sea Maid has told us that this ship sits on the bottom of the
harbor. If we could board it--" began Torgul.

"Yes!" Vistur brought his fist down against the end of the bunk on which
the Terran still sat, jarring the dull, drug-borne pain in Ross's head.
"Take it--then turn it against its crew!"

There was an eagerness in all Rover faces. For that was a game the
Hawaikan seafarers understood: Take an enemy ship and turn its armament
against its companions in a fleet. But that plan would not work out.
Ross had a healthy respect for the technical knowledge of the galactic
invaders. Of course he, Karara, even Loketh might be able to reach the
sub. Whether they could then board her was an entirely different matter.

Now the Polynesian girl shoo